Creativity is only natural and spontaneous if and when a person is motivated by his "soul" - his ultimate and eternal inner self. Furthermore, the soul must be motivated from love of God, and to participate in divine creation.
But that is very seldom what motivates people.
Instead, people are motivated by this-worldly expediency; by the desire for money, status, security, sex and all the rest of it. Now of course there must be some such motivation, or else we would not even survive, and would soon become dysfunctional.
Nonetheless, to orientate towards, be-motivated-by, live-in-terms-of, this-worldly expediency is Not creative.
Real, ultimate creativity comes from the soul and is orientated towards divine creation; creativity does not come from the personality, and creativity is not orientated towards our situation in this mortal world.
It is not creative when our "personality" is in charge - especially when we are trying to manufacture and shape our personality to enhance our this-worldly success; e.g. when we are trying to behave as other-people (or we ourselves!) expect "a creative person" (e.g. a poet, musician, scientist etc.) to behave.
It is not creative when our thinking, speaking and, actions are orientated towards trying to get the external world to acknowledge us as "creative" - nor when we are trying to achieve status, money, sex (or whatever) as a consequence of our publicly-acknowledged "creativity" (e.g. to be a "recognized", or "successful" poet, musician, scientist - or whatever).
In the end; such is the pressure of this-worldly expediency that it seems is if - although every person, indeed every Being, is innately creative - extremely-few people actually are-creative at any time.
And those who sometimes are genuinely being-creative, find it impossible to sustain for very long.
This is because of the unrelenting pressure to survive in this mortal life, as well as the temptation to succeed. By "succeed" I mean optimizing our benefits in this-worldly terms; aiming to reap the many and various potential benefits of impressing or manipulating other people, or The System.
Indeed, it is not merely incapacity and other-priorities that suppress creativity; genuine creativity is actively suppressed by in-themselves by people-themselves; and it is also actively suppressed by some-people in other-people.
This active suppression of creativity can happen (or be justified) by "practicality" backed by a moralizing zeal that we, and others, ought to be this-worldly; that people ought to work for their own survival and success, ought to help themselves, their families, their employers, the country etc.
Such considerations of our Duty are necessary and valid requirements for our survival and thriving in the mortal life and world...
And yet; if these considerations of Duty are made everything, and all the time and receive all our best efforts; then we shall never be truly creative, and shall fail even to try to fulfil our God-given positive reason for experiencing this mortal life on earth.
6 comments:
There seems to be an inverse correlation between alienation and creativity. Modern abundance was supposed to “free” us from menial tasks so we could devote ourselves to greater creativity. But the reverse of this has happened. People were far more creative when everyday survival was infinitely more difficult in premodern times. Which seems to suggest that the need for survival can coexist with creativity in a balance, but that the presence of alienation decisively skews this towards survival. The Welsh poet and artist David Jones described this phenomenon as utility edging out gratuity and linked the triumph of the utile to the denial of the spiritual. To see this played out, one needs only compare a gothic cathedral, a riot of gratuitous ornamentation, with the purely functional form of a modern skyscraper typical of modernity.
@FJ - I think you are correct about alienation; but also I would distinguish between the creativity of ancient times, and modern. Ancient creativity was more like the spontaneous creativity of happy and integrated young children. Nowadays, most humans are more like adolescents - and creativity needs to be much more self-conscious and chosen, because alienation is the starting point.
This is why the idea of "a genius" only became conceptualized in relatively modern times (late 1700s, approximately)* - because modern creativity (the modern situation) requires each person to be his own personal genius, for his own personal spiritual benefit.
*Of course, that was to a considerable extent a socially-defined understanding of outstanding, and publicly recognized genius - but I mean here the inner and underlying creativity which was regarded as underlying the public expression.
That makes sense. I encountered David Jones's ideas regarding art before I learned about the evolution of consciousness through your writing. It crossed my mind that that was the piece of the puzzle he was missing. He was a Catholic and frequently referred to the growing lack of gratuity in the deeds of men as "the Break," tracing its beginning to approximately the Reformation and the loss of a sacramental worldview. Try as he might, he could not explain why the loss occurred. The evolution of consciousness not only shows why this occurred, but also that the form it has taken was not inevitable, and that alienation as a virtually permanent state was a result of choice on the part of Western man.
All too often creativity (in any form) gets mistaken for societal attitudes towards creativity, not what creativity is in itself. But creativity is fundamentally individual, not societal.
Post-partum musings and experiences I’m having are aligning nicely with these creativity posts. I’m noticing a tendency/temptation I have to force linearity on beings and a connection between linear expectations/definitions of success/progress/goodness and “rules/systems.” Awhile ago you argued that justice is not a virtue relevant to heaven, which galls me greatly, but if justice is defined as “equitably application of rules” then I really can’t disagree! Heaven can hardly be envisioned as “a place of lots and lots of ideal rules” except maybe by a highly psychologically suspect person. While I think there must be some transcendent form of justice that *is* core to heavenly life, the rules aspect must be overcome and discarded.
Meanwhile in this life we certainly need the guardrails or scaffolding which often take the form of rules. But so many experiences of life speak to the harmful nature of those rules, especially when it comes to real, genuine, natural growth which is always creative and ergo never linear, never even really definable because entirely personal. As a parent/guide/mentor of others, you can’t even really define your job or success in that role, but you definitely face many opportunities to recognize and repent tyrannical tendencies that have no place in heaven (yet frequently have an unavoidable place in mortal life).
What I’m getting at (because I assume the above is very unclear!) is that we aren’t just being prepared in this life to be in perfect harmony with God but also to be in perfect harmony with other beings- that it’s not as simple as “everyone harmonizes with God and ergo automatically harmonizes with each other” but rather because of individual uniqueness and creativity more needs to be done so that each being can eternally live alongside every other being, directly not just “through” God. And I think the reason for this is that God’s goal is a dynamic and ever expanding creation fueled by the freedom and creativity of all beings.
@Mia - Good comment!
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